Inside the P200m spy tender

Nikuv International Projects- a secretive and discredited Israeli company that has been accused of widespread corruption and rigging the 2008 presidential elections in favour of Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF-has won tenders worth more than P200 million in Botswana since 2007. A collaboration between Botswana Guardian and South African’s M&G Centre for Investigative Journalism (amaBhungane) has established that the company, which is also linked to the notorious and feared Israeli intelligence organisation Mossad, has won most if not all of its tenders within the ministry of Labour and Home Affairs.

Most of the tenders were in the departments of Immigration and Citizenship, Civil and National Registration. In other countries the company has won tenders in similar ministries. According to documents seen by this publication the company was issued with Certificate of Registration of External Company on 11th December 2007 by the government of Botswana, but records show that it started winning the tenders in the ministry as far back as July 2007 before the registration certificate was issued.

Though the tenders have not caused any controversy in Botswana as it is the case in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, the awarding of the tenders has raised questions on whether the company was properly screened and vetted when it first started doing business in Botswana. The director general of the Directorate on Intelligence and Security Isaac Kgosi refused to comment when asked about whether his agency or security apparatus properly vetted the suspicious organisation.

Zimbabwe In other countries the company has attracted much controversy. In Zimbabwe, it is alleged to be working on the Zimbabwean voters’ roll. Zimbabwean opposition MP Eddie Cross, who has proved well informed on security matters in the past, quoted a security source as saying that the company, Nikuv International Projects, is working on the current voters’ roll at Defence House, the headquarters of the Zimbabwe Defence Force. Cross said the source told him that the company is working under the direction of Daniel Tonde Nhepera, the deputy head of Zimbabwe’s dreaded internal security arm, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO).

Another Zimbabwean intelligence source confirmed the allegation that Nikuv is working on the voters’ roll “with the CIO”. In the early 2000s the Zimbabwe Independent reported that Nikuv had won a contract to upgrade the computer systems in the registrar-general’s office, where the voters’ roll is housed. In the run-up to elections Zimbabwean opposition parties accused the company – which still had a presence in the country – of assisting the Zanu-PF government to manipulate the roll in favour of Robert Mugabe. The Movement for Democratic Change also alleged that Nikuv was a front for Mossad, although it offered no evidence to support the claim.

Suspicions of election rigging were heightened when Zimbabwe’s electoral commission took five weeks to release the results. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai calculated that he had won well over 50 percent in the first round of polling, but when results were eventually published he was credited with 47.9 percent against Mugabe’s 43.2%, forcing a run-off. A campaign of violent intimidation led Tsvangirai to withdraw from the second round, leaving Mugabe in power. The Israeli embassy in Pretoria took the unusual step of issuing a statement denying Mossad was involved in any way in the elections. But an amaBhungane investigation has found that top executives of a Nikuv subsidiary, ISC International Security Consultancy, have an Israeli intelligence background.

Zambian electoral mess In Zambia, where Nikuv was brought in to manage and computerise voter registration, the United National Independence Party (Unip), accused the ruling Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) of trying to rig the 1996 election with the company’s help. Unip eventually boycotted the poll. The Zambian opposition also complained that Nikuv had “mishandled” a similar voter registration exercise in Zimbabwe. It accused Nikuv of landing the contract without proper tender procedures, in a process allegedly managed by the office of vice-president Godfrey Miyanda rather than the election commission.

The Zambian High Court found that the registration process was flawed, but that there was no evidence of a built-in majority for the ruling MMD. Nevertheless, the Nikuv roll was later scrapped. Governmental sectors’ On its website Nikuv says that the company focuses on projects for “governmental sectors” and initiated activities on the African continent in 1994 in Nigeria. It had “since expanded its activities to Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Botswana and Angola in IT and additional areas like agriculture and security.” In Botswana the company still has live contracts for an immigration and citizenship system, as well as support for the births and deaths register, which have not generated controversy. However, amaBhungane understands that Nikuv’s offices in Lesotho were raided last month, apparently in connection with an identity document contract awarded last year in controversial circumstances.

It had previously won an open tender to supply passports in Lesotho. Its first Zimbabwean contract appears to have been a $15-million deal signed in November 1994, reportedly to computerise the ministry of home affairs, the census office and the election system. The deal was backed by the Israel Foreign Trade Risks Insurance Corporation. According to a 1999 report in the Zimbabwe Independent, Nikuv was awarded the contract without going through the state tender board. It claimed the voters’ roll was chaotic and the national population registration exercise in disarray because of a tug-of-war between the ministries of finance and home affairs over the Nikuv contract.

Riot control gear It also appears that a company linked to Nikuv played a role in helping the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) obtain riot control vehicles and water cannons, which would have been difficult for the ZRP to access at the time given international sanctions. On August 2 2001 Zimbabwe’s Financial Gazette reported that before the 2002 presidential elections, which the government feared that Mugabe would lose, the ZRP contacted a certain Eli Antebi, representing a company called Beit Alpha, about the purchase of the vehicles and water cannons. The amaBhungane investigation established a web of connections between Eli Antebi and Nikuv:

● According to its website (www.nipprojects.com) Nikuv International Projects Ltd was established in 1994 by Emmanuel Antebi as a subsidiary of the Formula Group, one of Israel’s largest software groups. As far as amaBhungane could establish, Emmanuel is Eli Antebi’s brother.

● The founder of the Formula Group, Dan Goldstein, appears in documents lodged with the Botswana company registrar in 2010 as a Nikuv director. In 2005 Goldstein formed a separate company called Formula Vision, whose website does not disclose Nikuv as a subsidiary. Goldstein failed to respond to detailed questions.

● A Financial Gazette report of August 9 2007, revealed that the Zimbabwean State Procurement Board had queried the Zimbabwe police’s insistence on purchasing 100 quad bikes through “a Netherlands-registered company, Pedflora”, which operated an account with Credit Suisse in Geneva.

The report said the purchase was eventually approved, despite the ZRP’ failure to explain why it had nominated Pedflora rather than following tender procedures. amaBhungane has established that Pedflora was registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2004 and that its directors were Eli Antebi – his full name is Eliahou – and another Israeli citizen, Dror Jackson. The Nikuv website lists Jackson as the representative of the company’s “agro division”. No online profile The company’s website says that Nikuv was formed “by a group of professionals with an accumulated experience of 45 years in the field of population registration and election systems in Israel.”

However, Eli Antebi, born in Haifa on May 24 1939, appears to have no online profile as an Israeli software pioneer. Indeed he has hardly any profile at all – a feature repeated with most other individuals associated with Nikuv. On its website Nikuv lists offices and numbers in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola and Botswana, but phone numbers for South Africa and Angola are out of date and those in Zimbabwe and Botswana ring unanswered. amaBhungane managed to contact the man who appears to be running the company’s project in Zimbabwe, Ron Asher, who has been in the country since 2011. Asher refused to disclose anything about the company’s activities in Zimbabwe, declining even to give the physical address of its Harare office. He referred all queries to the Nikuv head office in Israel.

The head office is on the second floor of a large unmarked building of concrete and darkened glass, buried deep in the industrial zone of Herziliya, north of Tel Aviv. It is listed alongside about ten other companies in the building’s reception – including Defence Technological Security Ltd – and appears to have a head office staff of about 20. When a reporter from The Guardian visited on amaBhungane’s behalf, the receptionist said the entire staff were in a “big meeting” and could not be disturbed. Nikuv Israel confirmed receiving detailed questions from amaBhungane on March 7, including a question about whether it is working on the Zimbabwean voters roll under the direction of the CIO.

It had not replied at the time of going to press a month later.   Lesotho: Nikuv’s trouble in the mountains Lesotho’s Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences had raided the offices of Nikuv International Projects in Maseru, while Lesotho police had questioned Nikuv’s deputy chief executive, Lesotho home affairs minister Joang Molapo said this week. The raids appear to be connected with two contracts awarded to the company, one for identity smart cards allocated last year without an open tender process. Molapo said the raid took place last month “because the ministry found a letter to the ministry from Nikuv saying that the project [which also includes a contract for e-passports] would cost $25-million, but the ministry presented a different figure of $29-million to the cabinet.”

The discrepancy had sparked suspicion of corruption and prompted the raid, he said. He confirmed that Nikuv “consultant” Steven Becker and a certain Amnon Peer were taken in for questioning by police but released the same day. Both appeared to have crossed to South Africa after their release. Through their South African lawyers, they had stated that they would only return to Lesotho if they were offered immunity from prosecution. Molapo said Lesotho’s current coalition government had inherited Nikuv from the administration of former Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili. “As a government we cannot commit to their conditions because investigations are ongoing. We don’t know what the results of the investigations will be,” he said. The Mail & Guardian found that the Nikuv offices in Maseru have been closed.

The controversial smart-card contract was allegedly signed two months before it received cabinet approval last year. Speaking from Maseru before the raid on Nikuv’s office, Bekker, who described himself as a Nikuv consultant, confirmed that the contract was under investigation in Lesotho and that the company was “prepared to be open in the investigation”. Asked whether there had been arrests in connection with the deal, he refused to comment, saying that the reporter should meet him in person. Lesotho’s home affairs minister Joang Molapo said in an interview in February that the government of Lesotho was investigating to see if the tender award involved “a fraudulent exchange of money.” The deal has been dogged by controversy from the outset. In March 2011 one of the bidders, South African-based Gemalto SA complained to the funders, the United States’ presidential Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), that important tender information had been leaked before the award.

It said that rival bidder and perceived front-runner the Iris Corporation, based in Malaysia, had wined and dined then-Lesotho Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili and his entourage before the adjudication. The MCA eventually announced that it would not be funding the ID card project and the government took it over. Nikuv hosted a party at a Maseru hotel in 2011 to celebrate after the government of Lesotho handed both the ID and passport contracts to Nikuv with no sign that there had been a fresh tender process. There were rumours that the aim was to remove the contract from the MCA’s stringent conditions. Former deputy prime minister and home affairs minister Lesao Lehohla said he saw nothing wrong with the tender award, as Nikuv “was found to be multi-skilled and would save money.”

“This company will provide us with e-passports as well as IDs, while MCA Lesotho was focusing only on IDs,” Lehohla was quoted as saying. Bekker said Nikuv had won a tender for e-passports but had been awarded the ID contract after an “internal evaluation” by the ministry. “Nikuv’s tender for the e-passport contract included the ID component and was still $5-million cheaper than our competitors, as shown by the internal evaluation,” he said. Retselisitsoe Khetsi, the principal secretary who signed the contract on the government’s behalf, declined to talk about Nikuv because he is “out of the civil service at the moment.” Khetsi was placed on an indefinite leave after he allegedly failed to explain to the new minister, Molapo, how Nikuv won the contract. “I am on leave until the expiry of my contract in May,” Khetsi told Mail & Guardian.

The Mossad connection A company linked to Nikuv International Projects – ISC International Security Consultancy – has provided security services in the past for OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg and other South African organisations, Nikuv’s website reveals. And an amaBhungane investigation has established that very senior former Israeli intelligence officers feature prominently among ISC’ principals. The website says that ISC “provides a full range of security services ranging from security advice to aviation security, debugging and “counter-surveillance”. In addition to OR Tambo, it lists an impressive spread of “satisfied clients” including Nokia in South Africa, the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Turkmenistan presidential palace, Kenya’s Rift Valley Academy, the Banco de Costa Rica, Russia’s Bank Menotep, Ecuador’s National Petroleum Company and the Hilton Hotels chain.

amaBhungane has established that ISC’s founders and senior associates appear to all have once served at the highest levels of the Israeli intelligence services. The president and founder of ISC is Dani Issacharoff. Said a former colleague, who asked not to be named: “Dani was with Mossad – he was very, very senior.” The brief biography given for a 2011 security conference Issacharoff addressed states that his career “started in 1968 when he joined the Israeli Government Intelligence and Security Agencies.” He is also described as a former head of security for the Israeli airline El Al and the founder and president of what appears to be ISC’s forerunner, a company called International Consultants for Targeted Security. The latter, set up in about 1982 by former members of Israel’s security agencies, specialised in airline security, particularly the risk profiling of passengers to identify high-risk individuals pioneered at El AL. By 1989, the company had become controversial. 

It was exposed in the Spanish newspaper El Pais as operating in Spain without the official authorisation required for foreign security companies – and using the Spanish-based Hachuel Group as a cover. The group’s president, Jacques Hachuel, was one of five original founders of Marc Rich & Co, now known as Glencore. He worked there from1972 to 1984, after which he sold his stake and went out on his own. Hachuel, like Rich, remained part of an elite Jewish business network that cultivated a relationship with Mossad. In an interview with El Pais at ICTS Israel headquarters, vice-president Moshe Lan denied the company had any connection with Mossad.

“It is true that we are all former security officials of the Israeli government, but everyone in this country is,” he was quoted as saying. When ICTS was taken over in 1994 by another obscure Israeli firm, Leedan Business Enterprises, its main players, including Issacharoff and Lan, resurfaced as directors ISC International Security Consultancy – the “affiliate” of Nikuv. ISC, according to its own website, has representatives in Israel, South Africa, Kenya, Italy and Switzerland. The South African number no longer works, but Issacharoff keeps a half-day secretary at the office of a well-known local security company Nicholl, Steyn & Associates and travels to South Africa regularly. Speaking from Israel, Issacharoff said that ISC currently had a minimal involvement in South Africa, which involved tracing miners for a class action suit against mining companies for compensation over lung disease.

Sounding relaxed, Issacharoff, who is now 75, said there was no formal relationship with Nikuv: “We just worked on some joint projects together.” He had not been involved in Zimbabwe for more than two years, though he declined to say what his last engagement there entailed. Travel records show Issacharoff has been in Harare at least twice since the beginning of 2013. This is a collaborative investigation between Botswana Guardian and M and G centre for Investigave journalism {amaBungane}